November 28, 2007
On leaving Iran out of the Middle East peace talks
A little more than one year before he leaves the White House, George W. Bush seems to be making a drive to achieve a lasting peace in the Middle East. According to today’s headlines, top representatives of the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government have agreed to try for a new agreement by the end of 2008.
The present peace conference in Washington is multilateral. Participants from some 40 nations, including Syria and Saudi Arabia, are in attendance. The Arab nations that are at least on speaking terms with the United States are seen as pivotal, given their influence within the Palestinian community and the region.
Notably absent from the conference are Hamas and Iran. Neither was invited. These two entities are both actively hostile to both Israel and the United States.
Much has been made of these two omissions from the invite list; and some have questioned whether any peace agreement can succeed long-term without the “buy-in” of Hamas and Iran.
It is important to note that Hamas and Iran are fundamentally different in nature. Hamas is a terrorist group that is violently competing with the Palestinian Authority for power. Excluding and isolating Hamas is a good idea---and probably a necessity. It is difficult to conceive of any scenario in which Hamas would fulfill a positive role in the service of peace, given its roots in Islamist fundamentalism. Hamas will only complicate matters. The best outcome would be for this group to wither and dissolve, and this is not an unrealistic scenario if conditions improve in the Palestinian territories.
Iran, on the other hand, is not going away. With a population several times the size of Iraq’s, Iran views itself as a major regional player. This was true in the days of the shahs; and it has been true in the Islamic Republic of Iran since 1979. Iran has made its presence known throughout the region over the past twenty-five years, mostly through its support of terrorist proxy groups. The bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in1983 had Iranian origins, as did the al-Da’wa bombings in Kuwait that same year. In 1996, there was a major bomb attack against Americans at the Khobar Towers complex in Saudi Arabia. This attack was carried out by a Saudi group that takes its orders from Tehran.
We therefore have many legitimate reasons not to want to engage Iran. Now that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq is no more, Iran has become the primary threat in the Middle East at the nation-state level.
Nevertheless, we must distinguish between engaging Tehran and embracing it. History proves that we often have much to gain by talking even to despicable governments. As I have noted before, Kennedy talked to Kruschchev even as the Soviets were threatening to overrun Berlin. And Nixon opened talks with Communist China even as Mao was backing a bloody Communist revolution in Cambodia, and subjecting the Chinese people to the horrors of the Cultural Revolution.
Both of these engagements ultimately yielded strategic benefits. Kennedy’s dialogue with the Soviets reduced the tensions of the Cold War; and Nixon’s negotiations with China gave the U.S. the “China card” to play against the Soviet Union.
However, both Nixon and Kennedy had a better grasp of the principles of real politik than anyone near the top in the Bush Administration seems to have.
If we are going to be involved in the Middle East at all, we are going to have to talk to unsavory governments. Even our top allies in the region are guilty of numerous human rights abuses and the support of various forms of theocracy. The Middle East is not Western Europe; and we have to deal with the region as it is for now---in the hope that it might someday become something better.
Sooner or later, that it going to mean a dialogue between the United States and Iran. And this is especially urgent given the very real possibility of war over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
But with extremely ideological presidents in both Washington and Tehran, even a limited reconciliation seems out of the question in the foreseeable future. To use Sino-American relations as a metaphor; there is currently no Henry Kissinger or Chou En-lai who can smooth the way for a dialogue on both sides. Engagement will probably have to wait until both George W. Bush and Mahmoud Amadenijad are out of office.
Let’s just hope that events in the region don’t get too far out of control before then….
